The Big Sit! 2013 Statistics

These statistics reflect information submitted by reporting circles. As teams continue to report their Big Sit! results, the statistics on this page will change to reflect up-to-the-minute information.

Weather: Temp was comfortable as to be not noticable. Cloudy. Winds mainly light from the SE, occasionally shifting S or NE.

Location: Village Creek Drying Beds, just east of new parking area.

Time At Location: 14 hours, 10 minutes.

Notes: We ended up with 77 species, which was a little low of our six year average of 82 species.
This was our seventh year in a row at the Village Creek Drying Beds for the Big Sit and was probably the most uneventful Big Sit weâ€™ve had. Turnout was good with 22 total participants. As usual, about six or seven of us stayed nearly the entire day. We got started around 5am and finished up at 7:10pm. Rain threatened for much of the afternoon but we only endured rain for a total of 15 minutes. Weather conditions were not great for a lot of migrants. We were hoping the front would pass through and bring north winds but that didn't happen as the winds were mainly coming from the southeast. Even though the north winds never materialized we were happy to have to not deal with the blazing Texas Sun. Still, a little sun in the morning would have probably helped us with our low passerine count. The fact that the drying beds were "dry" up until recently definitely factored into our low species count. Even though we had plenty of water in the beds, it seems the life cycle had been disrupted as we just did not have a good diversity of ducks, and wading birds. This was by far our worst year for ducks and long-legged waders as we missed Snowy and Little Blue Herons, and Cattle Egret, species we usually see.
Nevertheless, there were some highlights: We heard four owl species before dawn - Great Horned, Barred, Barn and Eastern Screech. We also heard at least one American Bittern. We added some new species to the Big Sit cumulative list this year: Yellow and Nashville Warblers, Eastern Screech-Owl, Mottled Duck and a Hairy Woodpecker. The highlight of the day was probably a young Peregrine Falcon, which took a lap around the main pond and came towards us at eye level giving us a unique, level, head on view. We had some other raptors come through which occasionally broke up a long, somewhat uneventful day. Other flyby highlights were two Black-bellied Plovers, a Mottled Duck, Merlin, and several Northern Harriers.

Anecdotes: There were a lot of changes this year at the drying beds and we are grateful that we are still able to have afterhours access to the Drying Beds. Special thanks to Greg Cook and Charley Amos for their work with Steven Nutter and the Fort Worth Water Department for working through some tough issues and keeping VCDB open to the public while working through ever increasing water usage issues.
We'll be back at it next year for sure!